Jesus said, "Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them,
for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these."Matthew 19:14

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Wednesday, August 9, 2017

The Lord's Prayer

Children’s Chapel

August 13, 2017

·Welcome: Good Morning
girls and boys! I am so happy to see you all this morning! Do we have any new
friends with us? (Welcome new friends.)

·Church Practice:

We
are now in the liturgical season of Ordinary Time. The cloth on our Children’s Chapel altar is green
today which is the color we use during Ordinary Time.Who would like to move the arrow on our
liturgical calendar? (Allow one child to come up to the calendar to move the
arrow forward one week.) The arrow is now pointing to the tenth green
square.You will also notice that in big
church the altar frontal, church dressings, and clergy stoles are green. (Light
altar candles.)We light these
candles to remind us that Christ is the light of the world. We remember that
God is always with us, that Jesus lives in our hearts and that we are inspired
by the power of the Holy Spirit. Before we begin our Bible lesson today, let us
pray.

·Children’s
Collect:Let us pray, Heavenly
Father, we are here to worship and praise you. Open our hearts and minds so
that we may hear your words spoken to us through the Bible story today. Give us
strength that we may serve you through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives, and reigns
with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen

·Response:Today we are going to talk
about the prayer Jesus taught us to say. There are some big words and
hard things to understand in this prayer, so we are going to think about them
out loud together.

The prayer begins:

Our
Father, who art in Heaven (Pull out the collage of people and animals and hand to a
child who will hold it while you speak.)

Some people find it helpful to think about God’s
love for us like a father’s love for his children. You can also think about
God’s love as being like the love of the person who knows you and loves you the
best such as your Mom and/or Dad’s love for you, or the love of your sister or
brother, or the way your grandparents love you.God’s love for us is bigger than any love,
but our love that we feel in our families helps us to think about God’s love by
remembering how we feel when we are with the person who knows us and loves us
best.

Hallowed be thy NameGet ready with your “holy” poster.

“Hallowed” is a funny word, isn’t it? Does
anyone know what it means? “Hallowed” is a word that means “holy” (Hand a child the poster with the word “HOLY” on it) or “special.” And God’s name IS
special and holy.

Thy
Kingdom Come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven (Hold up the globe)

We ask God to help us do God’s will and to help us
make the world the way God wants it to be – just like God sees the world in
Heaven.

In this part of the prayer, we are asking God to
use us to help make the earth the way God imagines it can be. (Hand the globe to one of the children.)

Give
us this day our daily bread (Take out the loaf of bread and hand it to another child.)

I wonder what this could mean? Back in the
times when the Bible was written, bread was the basic necessity of life.
In the prayer, bread is a symbol for asking God to make sure we have what we
need. What do you think are the things we need?

And
forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against usHold up the “No
trespassing” sign and pass it off to another child

“Trespasses” is another of those big words that we
need to think about. Have you ever seen a sign like this one? What
do you think it means? When we “trespass” against someone, we do
something wrong, something that is hurtful to or disrespectful of another
person. We ask God to forgive us and to help us forgive others.

Lead
us not into temptation, but deliver us from evilPull out the
Monopoly money or the gem

“Temptation” is another big word. “Temptation” can
be lots of things. What tempts you? It can be something as big
wanting to steal from other people or as small as sneaking a cookie from the
cookie jar when Mom or Dad has said, “Not until after dinner!” We ask God
to help us stay away from the things that we know are wrong for us to do.
And that is how “deliver us from evil” gets into the prayer. In the
“trespasses” line just before this one, we prayed about forgiving others from
the wrong they have done to us and we ask for forgiveness for the wrongs we
have done to others.

For
Thine is the Kingdom, and the power and the glory, forever and everPull out the crown
and hang on to it

This last part of the prayer reminds us that
everything in the world, even our very selves, belongs to God. Even the
things we think we own, really belong to God. In telling God that we know
all the blessings and good things we have come from him, we tell God that we
trust him to lead us in our lives and to help us take good care of the gifts
God has given us.